Years ago Al Davis phoned a former Raiders player and coach to float an idea.

The man's wife answered the phone and said her husband was out. She could tell Davis was on high rev and asked what he was calling about.

Davis told her he had a plan. He wanted to create a Raiders cemetery, where all the old teammates and coaches could eventually be buried together.

"That's an interesting idea," the wife said, "but what about the wives?"

There was a pause.

"That's a problem," Davis said and hung up.

To Davis, the Raiders were never a team. They were a family and a brotherhood and a universe unto themselves. The Raiders were a specially chosen group, an elite force that would triumph over lesser forces, even if there were setbacks, even if those setbacks lasted for a decade.

If you were a true Raider, Davis' loyalty was absolute. Howie Long told me he phoned Davis many years ago in a panic. Long's grandmother, who raised him, was diagnosed with cancer. Long was trying to get her into a hospital in Boston renowned for its cancer treatment.

"I told him I was desperate," Long said. "It was impossible to get her in. There were no openings. I told Al I had offered to make a large donation to the hospital, but they still said there was no way she could get in.

"Al said he'd get back to me. Twenty minutes later he called back and said, 'Take your grandmother to the hospital. They'll be expecting her.' "

Davis believed he was smarter and wiser than other NFL owners, and in some ways he was. To me, his greatest achievement was hiring Art Shell in 1990 as coach. The league had not had a black head coach since 1925.

That color barrier was de facto segregation, backed by a clubbish, old-boy hiring system that made it nearly impossible for blacks to become coordinators, let alone head coaches. Not only were blacks not getting hired as head coaches, there were no blacks even in the picture.

Davis considered Shell a capable football man and leader, so this was no charity case. But I am absolutely convinced that Davis hired Shell because Davis was appalled and offended by the color barrier. He knew if he didn't hire a black coach, nobody would. The league owes Davis big-time for erasing that embarrassment.

"Misunderstood" is a cliche, but in some ways Davis was.

People point to Irwindale as an example of Davis' devious and ruthless nature. When the Raiders were based in Los Angeles, the tiny city of Irwindale, east of L.A., wanted to work with Davis to build a stadium inside a massive, abandoned gravel pit.

Irwindale, a tiny area torn up by gravel quarrying, looks like the surface of the moon, but it's awash with money, tax revenues from a giant brewery. The city agreed to give the Raiders $10 million to develop the stadium plan. The agreement called for the Raiders to keep the money if the deal fell through.

It fell through, thanks to Davis' political enemies. He kept the money, as per the agreement. I believe Davis truly wanted to build that stadium, and I don't believe that the Irwindale people felt Davis ripped them off.

Davis was a great battler. It was him against the world, always, and his entire organization reflects that feeling. He battled everyone, on every level - politicians, league presidents, other team owners, players he suspected of not being Raider enough, and for sure, the media.

A couple of years ago, Davis disliked a column I wrote about him. It was a sympathetic column - the lion in winter, trying to carry on in the face of changing times and his own health problems.

A week later I ran into Davis in the Raiders' nearly empty locker room after a game. He was in his walker. He cursed at me at some length, loudly, and closed his comments with, "If I was 15 years younger, I'd kick your f-in' ass."

I will miss that Al Davis passion.

Someone on TV described Davis as "the last of a dying breed." That is incorrect. Al Davis was a one-man breed, the first and the last.